New VERDE Features Help Customers Including Birmingham Metropolitan College Address Key Economic and Complexity Issues Associated with Traditional VDI

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Virtual Bridges, Inc. today announced that new features of its VERDE Cloud Branch and on-premises deployment solution have been incorporated into the IBM Virtual Desktop solution to support the growing demand for scalability and simplicity with mobile computing. As a result, clients can now more easily manage and secure employee desktops from any location. This new solution is now part of IBM's Endpoint Management and Mobile portfolio, integrating with IBM SmartCloud management solutions.

Featuring VERDE, the IBM Virtual Desktop is used by organizations around the world to lower the barriers of virtual desktop management - reducing cost, complexity and security risks - to allow employees to use their desktops remotely from anywhere with any device.

Birmingham Metropolitan College (BMet), one of the largest colleges in the UK with more than 35,000 students and 1,300 employees, is deploying the solution across all campuses to create a "Classroom in the Cloud." It provides access to desktops, applications and learning materials at any time, from any location or device.

"Today's students will have much greater access to technology than ever before. But supporting all of these emerging devices across our campus, and providing access to learning materials can be a significant challenge," said Jamie Smith, Director Systems and Policy Development, Birmingham Metropolitan College. "IBM Virtual Desktop, powered by VERDE, is a game- changer. By creating a virtual desktop environment, we will provide students with a flexible, location independent learning environment, that has changed the way our faculty can teach and our students can learn. In the next 3-5 years, I expect all large universities will follow our lead and deploy virtual desktops."

VERDE's focus on Cloud Branch has allowed the IBM Virtual Desktop solution to support large-scale enterprise customers in addition to mid-enterprise and smaller organizations. It features a single, comprehensive, yet clear management interface for VDI environments. Patent-pending storage optimization features also address the "Achilles Heel" of VDI by cutting IOPS by 80 to 90 percent, disconnected VDI support for mobile users and robust disaster recovery capabilities. The solution will now be sold both directly by IBM as well as through IBM partner channels.

Bare-metal install reduces cost and complexity for VDI deployments by requiring no pre-existing OS and allowing users to provision a Windows or Linux virtual desktop in under 30 minutes, including automated configuration of all internal storage applications and peripherals. This lowers operating and capital costs by improving customer time to value, eliminating operating system skills from the VDI server installation and reducing operating system costs associated with scaling a solution - no operating system licenses are required for initial installation or future growth.

Cloud Branch provides a best-of-breed end user experience by combining cloud-based management with an on-premise virtual desktop deployment. This combination centralizes management in the Cloud or Data Center while providing unique and industry leading remote office support that brings local-area-network availability and performance to virtual desktop users in remote offices connected over wide-area-networks. These new branch capabilities make delivery of VDI environments now possible in "brick and mortar" banking environments, retail and distribution stores, etc.

A sophisticated network management system reduces complexity and improves security by providing a virtual switch that enables easy configuration of VLANs, MAC addresses, and other sophisticated network configurations.

"Users and organizations are arriving at an inflection point in the evolution of end user computing. On the one hand users are adopting a wide range of devices and expect to use these at work, as well as on the go. While at the same time, organizations are struggling to manage inefficient and costly desktop upgrade cycles, not to mention the increased threat of data loss from laptops and other devices," said Jim Curtin, CEO of Virtual Bridges. "Launched by the most trusted brand in the world, the IBM Virtual Desktop is the right product at the right time to help organizations overcome these challenges."

Virtual Bridges VERDE is an award-winning desktop management and provisioning solution that leverages virtualization to deliver desktops either on-premises or in the cloud. VERDE helps enterprises transform TCO by simplifying desktop management, improving security and compliance, and increasing the organizational agility across Windows and Linux environments. Virtual Bridges is headquartered in Austin, Texas. For more information visit: http://vbridges.com.